RE: EBSCO and ProQuest database content

["Price, Vince" <vince.price@bellhowell.infolearning.com>]

I would like to respond to the claims made in the prior post about our
arrangements with Dow Jones and the New York Times, offer a comment about
the Gannett negotiations and address the incorrect generalizations made
regarding our publisher relationships.

In rare cases publishers decide up front to grant exclusive rights as they
solicit proposals for strategic partnerships. This is the situation with
both Gannett and Dow Jones. All aggregators had an equal understanding of
the requirements and had equal opportunity to bid. Gannett accepted the
co-exclusive proposal offered by Gale. Dow Jones selected the ProQuest
offer. In both cases, one of primary goals of the publisher was to broaden
access to its content and therefore increase royalties through services
that specifically target academic and public library markets. For example,
prior to the agreement with ProQuest, the Dow Jones titles were available
online only in New/Retrieval which was not deeply penetrated in the
academic markets. Through the partnership with ProQuest, access to the Dow
Jones content was greatly expanded. Both the Gannett and Dow Jones
situations are the polar opposite of the recent aggregator-driven
exclusives that have the goal of restricting access.

When a vendor is making a large investment in bringing new content to the
market, an exclusive gives the vendor the opportunity to recover its
investment. This is the contractual parallel to patent protections. In the
case of the New York Times, the size of the library market cannot support
duplicate investments in a high quality digital conversion by two or more
vendors. Without an exclusive, the content may never become available at
all because no vendor would take the financial risk. Several vendors
pursued this opportunity but ProQuest was selected based on factors that
included technical, manufacturing and distribution capabilities, financial
commitments and corporate financial strength. Only the deep backfile
portion of the agreement is a limited exclusive. The current portion
(1981+) of the New York Times is non-exclusive with several vendors
offering access.

Strategic exclusives take content that was previously available more
broadly and restrict it in the interest of limiting access and therefore
library choice. Through direct contact with hundreds of publishers it is
clear that there is a deliberate and broad program to incent publishers to
exclude ProQuest and a few other specific aggregators from publisher
content. The vast majority of publishers have rejected this approach
because they prefer the flexibility of non-exclusive agreements. In most
cases, those who signed did so reluctantly due to the magnitude of the
financial offer. The pursuit of exclusive relationships is changing the
business environment. Given the environment that has been created, we will
work to secure access to the content that was previously excluded from
ProQuest. You will see the first two such announcements in the next few
weeks that brings back to ProQuest titles that were formerly exclusive
elsewhere.

It is suggested that only a subscription agent would care about
subscription cancellations. This is not true. We have a 60-year history of
working with publishers to balance their whole revenue streams including
print subscriptions, circulation/advertising, reprints, archive royalties
(microform) and database royalties. If a deal is not good for the
publisher, it is not good for ProQuest or our library customers. We have
very long-term relationships with publishers that focus on sustainable
business relationships and not solely short-term strategic advantage. We
emphasize that ProQuest is a service that complements a library's holdings
and never suggest that customers cancel print given access in aggregated
databases. In fact it is in our best interest that libraries retain print
subscriptions because these are the titles that libraries choose to
archive on microfilm.

Regarding the definition of peer reviewed, our archives contain more than
20,000 serial titles for our electronic and microform businesses. We
closely manage the bibliographic information through direct contact with
the publisher. For ProQuest we use the most restrictive definition of peer
reviewed which requires that the journal have an editorial peer review
board that reviews articles before it is published. Another approach is to
use the more liberal definition of "scholarly." There are titles that are
scholarly but not peer-reviewed. Our customers indicated that they prefer
the more restrictive definition and this is the definition employed in
ProQuest. Libraries must be careful when comparing databases to account
for differences in this editorial policy.

Vince Price
Vice President - ProQuest Marketing
Bell & Howell Information and Learning
Ph: 800-521-0600
Fax: 734-761-4700


-----Original Message-----
From: Sam Brooks [mailto:SBrooks@epnet.com]
Sent: Sunday, May 27,2001 10:23 AM
To: 'liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu'
Subject: RE: EBSCO and ProQuest database content



Dear Deborah,

I would like to see if there is anything I can do to improve your
impression of EBSCO.

First, regarding your previous posting in which you thanked Gale and
ProQuest for not pursuing exclusives; according to the publisher, Gale has
a co-exclusive for all 73 Gannett newspapers.  This is the largest
newspaper publisher in the United States.  Other vendors share
semi-exclusive licenses in cases such as the New York Times and Wall
Street Journal.  EBSCO would like to provide our customers with full text
for all of these newspapers, but because of other agreements, we can not
do so.  The only reason it is different with academic publishers is
because EBSCO is the natural partner for these publishers, so these
publishers are not likely to align themselves with companies who have no
financial interest in preserving and expanding their core business:
journal subscriptions.  Regarding the idea that EBSCO is responsible for
all of the turmoil in our competitors' products, it's just not true.  We
have tried to differentiate ourselves with academic publishers because
many of them have shared with us that they have had negative experiences
with these other aggregators and and we do not want to be perceived as
similar to those vendors that have lost content.  Juggling the needs of
libraries and publishers is not easy, but it must be done if we are to
have the best possible products in the long-term.  This is our goal.

Second, we are not inflating the number of peer-reviewed journals in our
databases.  If they seem "suspiciously high", I assume that means you are
impressed with the numbers.  They are not faked or exaggerated in any way.
Any journal which is not yet fully loaded in the database is marked with
an asterisk and the list shows at the top: "* indicates that this
publication was recently added to the database and therefore few or no
articles are currently available".  We are in the middle of a massive
expansion this Summer and the lists attempt to reflect what will be on the
products this Fall.  In addition, we clearly show which journals are
categorized as peer-reviewed, unlike our competitors' on most of their
lists (the two exceptions are ProQuest Research Library and Gale Health &
Wellness - I can't find peer-reviewed status on any of their other
products).  We had a librarian identify which titles are peer reviewed.  
She updates the list as we add more journals.  These peer reviewed
journals are where the lion's share of the embargoes exist.  Our
philosophy is that a deep backfile of PDF's and ongoing-but-embargoed
coverage of leading journals is better than no coverage or abstract-only
coverage of these journals.

I agree with you that comparative searches are a critical part of the
evaluation process.  For best results in EBSCO databases, trials should be
planned for October/November, since by then the majority of the titles
marked "*" will be loaded and in addition, many of the backfiles from our
expansion product will start to appear by then.

Lastly, regarding the study done by J.B. Hill, I thought it was well done.
My conclusions were a little different, but I do not dispute the facts
used. It showed Academic Search Elite as the clear-cut journal quality
leader in nearly every subject category measured, but #2 in full text
backfiles.  To enhance our products, we have begun the massive backfile
expansion project that is detailed in the May 15, 2001 issue of Library
Journal.  We are hoping J.B. Hill will do a follow up of the article once
our backfiles are expanded.  In addition, we would like to see Academic
Search Premier included in any future comparisons as well as Academic
Search Elite.

Regards,

Sam Brooks
Senior Vice President
EBSCO Information Services
EMAIL: sbrooks@epnet.com

-----Original Message-----
From: LENARES,DEBORAH A. [mailto:LENAREDA@apci.com]
Sent: Friday, May 25, 2001 11:05 AM
To: 'liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu'
Subject: RE: EBSCO and ProQuest database content

Donnelyn,

Thank you for all this valuable information.  
One question:  do you know if each of the databases defines "peer reviewed"
in the same way?  The number of peer reviewed titles in EBSCO's Academic
Search Premier is suspiciously high.  Another valuable assessment tool is
performing a number of typical searches and evaluating the results both
quantitatively and qualitatively.

The members of the database selection committee of the Louisiana Academic
Library Consortium have spent much time over the past year comparing full
text databases.  Part of the results of the comparison are available in an
article by J.B. Hill of Southeastern Louisiana University in the latest
issue of Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship available at
http://www.library.ucsb.edu/istl/01-spring/article4.html The article
focuses on science titles in Bell & Howell's Research Library (Core and
Sciences modules), Ebsco's Academic Search Elite, and Gale's Expanded
Academic ASAP.

Deborah Lenares